I’m pretty disorganized most of the time. My notes are sparse and have almost no structure. My Slack Saved For Later pretty much is my to-do list at work.

This feels like blasphemy to say as a PM 🫨
But it’s just how I am.

I think it’s a byproduct of my brain moving and connecting dots very quickly. I’ve rarely felt it adds value (for me) to spend a ton of time organizing my thoughts in some sort of paper trail or notes app, or robustly follow some framework for prioritization or getting things done.

I think this works for me, though, because:

• It allows me to think on my feet and stay flexible & opportunistic
• It allows me to not get stuck too much in details and think about the 10k foot view
• It allows for more time for creative thinking & problem solving
• It allows for good outcomes instead of wasting time on perfect
• Between AI note-takers and great full-text search, I can easily dig up any notes I did take somewhere without having organized them!

Where it falls down (and what I’m working on):

• I sometimes don’t communicate my vision/plan for something as clearly as I could, often because I assume that others “just get it” when some do crave more structure or clarity
• It risks me losing focus and I sometimes need to work hard to reclaim focus on a particular problem space
• This in turn results in a lot of context switching and, potentially, burnout
• Probably some other lingering issues I’m not even thinking of 😬

I’ve gotten to a place where I can keep tabs on everything pretty well with a minimum amount of organization, and it’s fine for me, but as with most things it’s never perfect.

Friends – are any of y’all like me? How do you balance staying organized with thinking on your feet?